


steps of glory to the grave

by Corycides



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:50:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For want of a nail, the shoe was lost...</p><p>In 2012 Rachel Matheson - tired of arguing with her husband about the ethics of science - left before the launch of their nanotechnology programme. She was travelling to her parents when the lights went out.</p><p>15 years on, Charlie Matheson is hunting rebels...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AvaRosier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaRosier/gifts).



The snake of passengers wound its way from the gate through the narrow rows of hard, plastic seats, jostling and trampling on the feet of those waiting for the next plane out. A woman at the front of the line was arguing shrilly about her seat with a tightly-smiling attendant in a day-glo yellow safety vest. The irritation was crawling backwards like a contagion, spreading via sighs and rolled eyes.

It didn’t take long for two already crabby children to pick up on the atmosphere and start sniffling and whining.

Rachel closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb, squeezing back the burn of tired, frustrated tears. She could imagine the judgemental looks being thrown her way, she didn’t need to see them too.

‘Mom, mom,’ Charlie rhymed, tugging at Rachel’s trouser leg with candy sticky - breaking the no-sweets after dinner rule, but Rachel hadn’t the patience to deal with a tantrum - fingers. ‘Danny’s messed himself.’ Pause, and then in the judgemental tone she’d perfected since Danny was born. ‘Again.’

It almost - almost - made Rachel laugh. She took a deep breath instead and pulled her hair back from her face, twisting the honey-dark looks around her fingers.

‘OK,’ she said, looking down and making herself smile. ‘We’ll have to do something about that, don’t we.’

Hours earlier, on her way out of the house, it had seemed a tragic small burden to carry out of a marriage. Two children, one suitcase, a nappy bag and a bright green Brave backpack for Charlie’s toys. Now it seemed an impossible burden to juggle all the way to the toilets and back.

Five minutes. She’d just be five minutes. Rachel used her knee to shove the suitcase out of the line and over to an empty row of seats. She picked up Charlie and plopped her down in the seat, putting her hand on the handle of the suitcase.

‘Charlie, ok, I want you to stay here,’ she said. ‘Don’t you move and if anyone tries to talk to you, you just run over to the lady in the yellow vest. Can you do that for me?’

She got a solemn nod in response. ‘Then we’re going to see Grandpa and Grandma.’

‘That’s right,’ Rachel said, tidying her cardigan.

‘And Daddy will come afterwards.’

Rachel could feel her smile curdling. She nodded anyhow, cupping Charlie’s face in her hands and kissing her nose. ‘That’s right. Now you just stay right here, OK? I’ll be five minutes. You just stay here.’

She pushed herself up. The old woman sitting in the row opposite gave her a disapproving look over her bifocals. Rachel caught herself - literally biting the words before they could escape her tongue - about to scream at her.

_What would you do? What am I MEANT to do? This was never what I wanted. Never. I was going to be an astronaut._

Except the old woman wouldn’t care. No one did. Even Rachel thought it was pathetic. This was what she had, no-one had made her take it, and she just had to make it work. She scooped up Danny and the nappy bag - the capering yellow ducks and bright blue foxes so cheerful she hated them - and hurried across the hall to the toilet.

‘Five minutes,’ she told Danny, plopping him on the changing table. He was getting too old not to be potty trained - potty training, at least - but he’d been so sick, for so long. Diapers had been the least of their worries. ‘Charlie will be fine.’

She stripped off his plastic pants, tossing them into the diaper bin, and wiped him off quickly, keeping up her usual banter about nothing and anything. One ear was cocked for any noise outside, any hint of anything suspicious happening.

It took three minutes and Danny was back in his car seat while Rachel scrubbed her hands under the hot tap.

Then her pocket started to ring. Quantum Theory - Ben’s ring-tone. ‘Somewhere you are not alone’ - well, that seemed like a joke now didn’t it.

Rachel fished her phone out of her pocket and clutched it in her hands, feeling the vibration itch through her bones. OK. She could do this. One last deep, steadying breath and she took the call.

‘I’m not coming back,’ she said, not giving Ben a chance to say anything. ‘We need some space to work out if we can fix this. I need some space to know if I…,’ the words she wanted to say were _made a mistake_ but that was cruel, and she’d no right to be cruel, ‘if we can fix this. If there’s-’

‘Rachel, Rachel. Shut up,’ Ben said. Any other time Rachel would have been furious, but he didn’t sound angry. He sounded terrified. ‘Where are you?’

‘What’s wrong.’

‘Rachel, we don’t have time,’ he said frantically. She could hear water running, pouring, in the background. ‘You have to come home, we have to stick together. It’s-’

There had been times before when Rachel was scared, when she thought she’d been scared. When she was 15 and her drunk boyfriend had stalled the car on the train lines, her head skipping between ‘I’m going to die’ and ‘Dad is going to kill me’. When Miles’ had been ‘missing in action’ and she’d thought he was dead and had to pretend to only care an appropriate amount for a sister-in-law. None of it was real in retrospect. Not even when they’d told her Danny was going to die, because she’d know she could fit that.

This was fear. A cold weight filling her bones, pinning her in place because there was nothing she could do.

‘Ben, Ben. Calm down,’ she said. In the echo chamber of her panicking brain, her voice sounded impossibly reasonable. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Silence. Heavy, horrible silence, as if he couldn’t force the words out.

‘Did they do it?’ she asked.

‘....yes.’

Her knees gave. Not dramatically, not like in the movies. They just wobbled under her, so she had to grab the wet, plastic counter for support.

‘I’m coming home now,’ she said. ‘We’ll be there soon. Ben, I….’ She wanted to say it, but she couldn’t. Not now. ‘I won’t let anything happen to the kids.’

Five minutes. It was too long.

She grabbed Danny, leaving the nappy bag, and ran outside. Charlie was sitting where she’d been put, swinging her pink sneakered feet and chatting animatedly to the old woman opposite.

‘Charlie,’ Rachel called, voice cracking. ‘Charlie.’

Her daughter looked up and smiled at her, that big, happy grin that made Rachel feel happy and helpless all at once. Then the lights went out and the world ended.

  



	2. Chapter 2

Blood sheeted down Bass’ face, fouling his vision with red and filling his mouth with the taste of copper. He blinked it away, spat it out and tried to get up. Someone tried to stop him and he broke their arm, snapped the larynx out of true and then they got out of his way.

His ears were ringing and his brain was…disjointed, flicking between the cool, green now and the hot, dry past. The last time he’d been blown up. Sad to say, that dusty, blood-stained desert had ended better than this would.

Maggie lay on the ground nearby, body folded awkwardly and blood bubbling on her lips. She wasn’t dead yet, but it wouldn’t be long. A spar of wood jutted from her stomach, bits of gut and bone caught in it like splinters.

He dropped down onto his knee next to her, touching her face. Blue eyes looked away from the sky, vague and sweeter than he’d seen them.

‘I always wanted to see my boys,’ she said, voice breathy and ruined. ‘Just kept...putting it off. Bitch didn’t win...gave me what I wanted.’

Defiant to the end. He kissed her forehead, tasting the grit on her skin, and felt her stop. Nothing dramatic. No cooling skin, so last death-rattle. Just an absence, a limpness to a body that never stopped moving.

Damn it. Damn it.

He pushed himself back from her. One last affectionate touch, smoothing her hair back from her face, and then he had to go. She deserved better. It didn’t matter though. He wiped his bloody face on his sleeve and lurched into a run, following the sound of fighting.

A man in heavy militia grey lunged out of the smoke, sword cocked back over his shoulder. Bass gutted him, opening his stomach from hip-bone to hip-bone, without breaking stride. The whole compound was burning, the wall of what had once been a Macy’s blown to gravel and shrapnel by the Irregular’s munitions.

Someone had sold them out - the thought skipped grimly through his head - but he’d have to deal with that later. He cut his way through the Irregulars between him and his slaughtered men - his jostled brain still skipping tracks between smoke and sand. It didn’t matter - he was still better than any of these half-trained thugs.

Not better than a bullet though. He felt it hit his shoulder a second BEFORE he heard the crack. It felt like a heated poker shoved into the joint, hammered home with a thump that sent him sprawling to the ground.

‘Fuck,’ he grunted, getting his elbows under him and shoving.

A boot on his back shoved him back down onto the broken tiles. ‘Get up again; the next shot will cripple you.’

It was a matter-of-fact threat, in a cool, young voice. Bass didn’t care much about whether he lived or died, hadn’t for a long time, but maimed he’d be worse off than he already was. He made his fingers relax, spreading them above the hilt of his sword.

The weight on his back shifted, the boot replaced by a knee, and his captor yanked his arms back roughly. Cuffs snapped around his wrist, the metal warm from body contact, and then he was hauled roughly to his feet.

‘Sebastian Monroe. You’re under arrest, by order of President Matheson, for crimes against the Republic.’ The soldierlooked too young for the command riveted to her collar, blonde hair braided over her shoulder and blue eyes cool and steady. War made for young captains, though, dragged up over the bodies of the dead. ‘You’re to be taken to Philadelphia, for trial.’

He grinned at her, for all it hurt his head. It might be the last chance he had to smile at a pretty girl - even an Irregular lieutenant.

‘Why not save yourself the pomp and circumstance and just put a bullet in me now?’ he asked. ‘We both know I’m not going to get a fair hearing at one of Matheson’s drumhead trials.’

The girl did him the courtesy of not pretending he was wrong. President Matheson wants to speak to you,’ she said. ‘So, you go to Philly. Don’t worry, I can put a bullet in there as easily as I can here.’

A tilt of her chin turned him over to the soldiers he’d left standing.

‘Patch him up,’ she said. ‘We don’t want him to die on the way.’

She turned her back and stalked away, one hand resting on the butt of the heavy silver gun that marked her as one of Matheson’s fast-track protegees. Her shoulders were tight as she pulled it out of the holster, checking the ammo with absent competence. Bass closed his eyes, clenching his jaw against the dull crack crack crack of her executing his soldiers.

‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘Why does Matheson want to talk to me? We said all we had to each other a long time ago.’

The lieutenant holstered her gun. Something told Bass it had taken this one a long time to do that without her fingers shaking. The dead lay where they’d fallen. It had been quick, he’d give her that, with neat, fresh holes drilled between their eyebrows.

‘She thinks you know where her brother-in-law is,’ she said, cocking her head to the side. ‘So, tell me, Monroe. You seen my Uncle Miles lately?’

He inhaled, the sting of gas and cordite in his throat, and let her name out on the exhale. ‘Charlotte.’

 

The Irregulars didn’t take prisoners as a rule. Bass was the only rebel taken out of the crumbling mall before it was put to the torch. It was quicker than digging a mass grave. Chained in the back of the supply cart, he twisted around to keep the flames in view for as long as he could.

It was a negligible penance, but it was the only one he could afford.

When they stopped for the evening the Irregular’s leech - a tall, raw-boned man with the hungry look of someone waiting to use - stripped his shirt off and poured raw grain alcohol into the scrabbed hole on his shoulder. Rough fingers poked at the wound and in Bass’ armpit, digging in enough to make Bass grunt with discomfort.

‘You’re lucky,’ the leech said eventually, bandaging him up with strips of bleach-stinking cotton. ‘You’ll likely keep the use of the arm.’

Bass snorted and leant his head back against the ridge of the cart. ‘So until they execute me, I can at least piss on my own?’ he said. ‘Life don’t get much better, does it?’

The man grimaced with reluctant amusement, lips stretching over discoloured, broken teeth. It hadn’t been easy to be a doctor after the Blackout, they’d been...valuable. The easiest way to keep them under control had been drugs (hostages were good, but labour intensive). To her credit Rachel had never done that, but if a few maintenance doses kept the ones that couldn’t get clean on point...what was the harm?

‘I don’t know where Miles is,’ he said.

It was even the truth. The last time he’d seen Miles, his best friend - his brother - had been when they’d assassinated Strausser. They’d split up to get out of the city, and Miles never turned up at the safe house. A day later, Rachel stepped out from behind the throne and took her place at the head of the Republic. Bass had been ok at Math in school, good enough to be able to put two and two together anyhow.

‘Hell,’ he admitted. ‘If anyone would know, I’d assume it’d be her.’

The leech shrugged and packed his equipment up - wiping the scalpel on the knee of his trousers and making Bass’ shoulder itch.

‘I don’t really care,’ the man said tiredly. ‘You want to die sooner than later, convince the lieutenant you’re no use. Maybe she’ll cut your throat for you.’

He walked away and left Bass sprawled on the cold, unpadded boards of the cart, watching the glittering sky. 15 years, and Rachel Matheson was still calling the tune.

 


	3. Chapter 3

There were two ways to transport the closest thing to a general the rebels had. One was deception: laying false trails, making unexpected decisions, sacrificing straight lines to circuitous routes and long-cuts through ally territories. That wasn’t going to work.

‘I’m not cunning,’ Charlie said. ‘And he is. No point in playing to his strengths.’

She slouched on a stool, elbows braced on her knees, and listened to their demurrals while she  tried to work the ache from her wrist. The storm fulminating overhead, towering, bruise-hued clouds and throat-clearing muttering of thunder, was going to break soon. Ever since she’d broken that arm - on the Georgian border it had been, covering Foster's flight from Atlanta to Greensboro - it ached in bad weather.

It drove Rachel mad. ‘A millennia of human endeavour and inspiration,’ she would grumble, ‘and the most accurate way of forecasting the weather is a badly set bone.’

Templeton leaned over the table for the bottle of watered down whiskey, pouring a shot for himself. ‘What about York?’ he said. ‘You lured Connolly out of his stronghold, outflanked him at the river, blew his dam and drowned half his men. He begged for terms from the President.’

Tell the truth and Rachel would have her guts for garters. Her promotion was based on York and the story was popular, based in the Irregular’s reputation for making war with pragmatic efficiency. Except Charlie had been running for her life, her commander dead and the men who were suddenly responsibility limping and injured. The only reason she didn’t take the shortcut through the dammed river was because she’d not known about it - until she was standing on the dam with saddlebags full of explosives and Connolly’s bloody handed murderers on her tail.

‘I didn’t say I was a bad soldier,’ Charlie said. ‘Just not a cunning one. I’m effective; Baker’s cunning.’

Templeton had served under both. He shuddered and downed his whiskey. ‘I’ll take effective then, if it’s up to me.

None of Rachel’s military commanders were Jacks-of-all-Trades. She admired efficiency, but the only geniuses welcome in the Republic were in her personal council. It was too risky otherwise. The Republic was too new for there to be a tradition of service, and she didn’t have the time to foster personality loyalty.

Or - Charlie would admit in the privacy of her own head - the patience to endear herself to the masses.

So her military commanders were a careful mixture of efficiency and flaws - competent in her service, not  good enough to pose a viable threat.

No one trusted Baker enough to join any coup he might mount; Faber wasn’t compelling enough and Charlie - she wasn’t naive enough to think she wasn’t measured against that rule - had a certain romantic appeal as the President’s daughter, but no flair. She was dogged though. Set her a task and she’d beat herself bloody to get it down.

‘The rebels will want Monroe back,’ she said. ‘Foster will see him as an asset and Blanchard will want him just to thwart the President. We don’t have the time or resources to out-think or out-maneuver them. So what’s left?’

She waited, raising her eyebrows expectantly. It was Thirsk who sighed, rubbing a finger over her scabbed eyebrow.

‘We outrun them.’

‘I outrun them,’ Charlie corrected. ‘And hopefully the news that we caught him.’

That was another argument, but Charlie got her way. She was the President’s only daughter, when it wasn’t Rachel she usually did get her own way. In the end. That was were the dogged part came in.

Six horses, three people (she’d had to make that concession in the end - it was still a win, she’d have agreed to five) and one prisoner. The storm had opened directly overhead, rain hammering down on the makeshift campsite. Charlie tugged her raingear on, the oilcloth stiff and musty-smelling, and scrambled up into her horse’s saddle. the piebald roan twitched a white ear in her direction and dropped its head to lip at the weeds poking through the cracked black road.

Three Irregulars walked Sebastian Monroe to his horse through the rain, yanking him back up by the elbows when he stumbled over his hobbling shackles. There was death on his face when he looked up, in the tight line of his mouth and hollow, ice-blue eyes. It was enough to give Charlie a pang behind her breastbone, but other than the nervy twist of her fingers around the reins she didn’t let herself show it.

Sebastian ‘Bass’ Monroe was personally responsible for the Grand Rapids Massacre, the bombing of the Muskegon Ferry and the Blue Hill Siege. Not to mention a dozen robberies, three suspected assassination attempts - on her mother - and smuggling. He was dangerous - bandaged shoulder and bedraggled curls aside -  it wasn’t a bad thing to remember that.

‘Lieutenant Charlotte,’ Monroe drawled, pulling himself up as straight as he could manage in shackles. ‘Going somewhere?’

Charlie glanced at one of the guards, giving her the ok with a quick nod. The woman jabbed a bony fist up under Monroe’s ribs, making him grunt and list.

‘Lieutenant Matheson,’ she corrected him. ‘Use it, Monroe.’

‘General Monroe,’ he mocked back. ‘Use it, Matheson.’

She blinked at him. ‘Doesn’t count if you promoted yourself.’

‘But it does if your mommy does it for you?’

That made her laugh. She grinned sharply at him. ‘Trust me, Rachel Matheson doesn’t believe in giving her kids a leg up.’

Not her daughter anyhow. Every promotion, every assignment Charlie earned had been despite her mom. She’d seen the letters to her commanders. Rachel expected her daughter to perform above and beyond expectations, so no one could question the President’s impartiality.

Monore was...watching her. Irritated with herself - she was giving too much away, even if she wasn’t sure how - Charlie gathered up the slack on her reins.

‘Get him on his horse,’ she said. ‘He gives you any trouble, break his legs and we’ll tie him to the saddle.’

Monroe smirked at her. ‘That’s it, Lieutenant Matheson,’ he said. ‘Show me you mean business.’

He got another bruised rib for that, but Charlie let him keep his legs. For now.


	4. Chapter 4

When he’d lain down, Bass had been one long blink away from falling asleep. Charlotte might look like an Abercrombie and Fitch model in military drag, but she hadn’t cut herself or them any breaks in the last week. The only things whose wellbeing she cared about was the horses.

Now, after a restless catnap, he could count the rocks through the thin bedroll and the wind rattling the trees was making his bones ache. He rolled over and sat up, using his elbow to lever himself up. Across the fire Charlotte looked up from her letter - to a lover, he supposed, from the way she chewed her lip over it - and frowned at him.

‘Go to sleep,’ she said, voice scratchy with the onset of a cold.

‘No,’ he said, leaning back against a tree and stretching his boots out to the fire. They stared at each other across the flames, the tilt of his eyebrow a mute question as to what exactly she was going to do. She shrugged and went back to her letter. After a minute of trying to do that and keep an eye on him, she gave up. Folding the paper up, she tucked it into her jacket, and unsheathed her sword, laying it over her knees.

The scrape of the whetstone was probably meant to be a mute threat, in all honesty Bass found it comforting. At this point, he’d spent more of his life than not depending on the man beside him and his weapons. The sound of good upkeep practices meant he’d be alive tomorrow...although the end of the month was still up in the air.

‘Tell me something, Lieutenant Charlotte-’ That got him an irritated look from under straight, blonde brows. Good, the more on edge she was the better. ‘What does your mom want with Miles? At his best he’s a violent, self-hating drunkard nudging fifty.’

She glanced up. ‘Aren’t you the same age?’

He grinned at her. It startled him how easy that felt. He’d flirted his way out of - and into - trouble before, but it felt almost natural.

‘I wear it better.’

She shook her head and bent her head back over her sword, frowning at a burr in the steel. ‘I don’t know. She just wants to find him; she thinks you’ll know.’

‘I don’t.’

She didn’t look up, but he could see the twist of her mouth. ‘I wouldn’t lead with that.’

‘Is this where you tell me that if I co-operate, the President will go easy on me.’

‘No.’ She wiped the sword and glanced up at the sky. ‘We should-’

‘It’s not even close to dawn, Lieutenant Charlotte.’

It took a second, but she finally looked at him. ‘It’s not my job to lie to you.’

‘Just your job to turn me over?’

Her mouth quirked up in crooked, bitter smile and she shook her head, braid trailing over her shoulder. ‘Save your energy.’

‘What?’

‘Playing the nice guy, playing on my sympathies,’ she said, getting up. ‘I was trained at Newton. How many kids did you kill when you blew that facility?’

She said it like she thought he wouldn’t know. Of course, she also said it like he was ashamed.

‘The rebels killed 104 Irregulars at Newton,’ he said. ‘The Irregulars killed the kids they used to be.’

‘Tell their families that,’ she said flatly. ‘See if they’d rather their kids were alive and well and getting them a cut in their taxes, or dead and all they get is an Irregular badge of service. So no, I don’t have any sympathy for you. You’re a criminal, and my only regret is that you get to live the extra days it takes us to get you to Philadelphia.’

The other Irregulars were awake. Bass could tell by how steady their breathing was, but no-one was going to admit they were listening. He smiled at Charlotte, waited until she grimaced and turned to walk away from him.

‘Belfast,’ he said, letting all the easy charm leak out of his voice. ‘You were stationed there too weren’t you, Lieutenant. Or did you think we didn’t keep track of the President’s blunt weapon daughter?’

Her shoulders went tight, hunching in towards her ears, and one hand clenched into a fist. Silence was his only answer.

‘How many people did you kill, Charlotte.’

She visibly relaxed her shoulders, forcing them down, and turned to look at him. Her eyes were hard and her mouth thin and he could see the raw wounds under the mask of her face. He had his own.

‘Not enough,’ she said. ‘Or the message would have been clear, and the rebellion ended there. This time, with you, I’ll make sure to underline it. It’s light enough to ride. Piss while you have the chance. We aren’t stopping again till we’re in Chicago.’

She stalked away, rousing the guards from fake slumber impatiently, and Bass watched her. She’d killed Maggie, she was going to sell him out to Rachel and she had been witness to the slaughter squads in Belfast...but he still felt an odd pang of remorse. He blamed Iris Matheson. Miles’ mother could guilt-trip at an Olympic level, her ‘more in disappointment than in anger’ look should have been controlled under some sort of convention.

It didn’t matter. That girl’s guilt was a weapon. Bass would use it if he had to. He’d use whatever weapon he needed to survive, that was what he’d promised Miles.


	5. Chapter 5

It was a stage as much as an office, designed to create specific reactions: authority, competence, compassion. The desk was heavy, dark oak - evoking the authority of patriarchal hierarchies past - and there was paperwork - to make it clear this was a working office - but no clutter - to make it clear everything was under control. Meanwhile gracious swoops of heavy cream silk curtains and vases full of fresh, colourful blooms - sunflowers today, fresh plucked - gave a token, comforting nod to the president’s nurturing, gentle side.

Personally, Rachel loathed both the curtains and the flowers - if you wanted to watch something dead rot, why not just shoot a cow and drag it in? - but apparently she required ‘softening’. Before the Blackout the assumption that as a woman, she couldn’t just be competent and authoritative would have galled her. Since…well, after committing genocide on the human race, an image problem was difficult to deny.

Today, for once, she ignored the paperwork waiting for her pen and her attention. She stood at the window - the part of her that clicked and calculated aware that anyone looking up would see her silhouetted and watchful, cinematically presidential - and breathed the cold from the glass. There was a crumpled ball of paper in her hand, the edges digging into her fingers.

In her daughter’s completely unlovely script, no amount of lessons had ever convinced Charlie that pretty enhanced meaning, the message that could change...the world: We have Monroe. On way home.

‘She’s a good soldier,’ Baker said.

Despite the fact she trusted him, despite the fact he’d shared her bed on occasion, Rachel listened for any note of pride or paternal affection in his voice. Charlie had a father. He’d died, and Rachel wasn’t in the market for a replacement.

‘She’s a good daughter,’ she corrected, turning around.

Baker sprawled on the other side of the desk. Under her narrowed eyes, he made a good faith effort at straightening up. It didn’t come naturally. Rachel put a pale hand on the back of her chair, turning it around so she could sit down. She laid the scrap of paper down and absently smoothed it out, pressing the creases out with her fingertips and an out-of-place affection. Most days her daughter called her sir or President Matheson, she saluted and hid whatever she was feeling behind Ben’s cold blue eyes. Just like Rachel had taught her. So it was odd to find it so affecting that Charlie still thought of Philadelphia as ‘home’.

Baker lifted a sandy brow at her and laced his hands over his knee. He claimed that before the Blackout he’d been a chiropodist and that everything he knew about tactics he’d learned from World of Warcraft. Most of that, Rachel judged, was a lie. It didn’t matter. The world before was gone, and in this world he was trustworthy. Or, at least, he was a man with a dislike of responsibility and no particularly out of the way vices

‘Monroe isn’t just a rebel,’ she said. Pausing, she thought about exactly about how much he needed to know. ‘He has information that we need, information that could give us an overwhelming advantage.’

A smile tilted Baker’s mouth and he nudged the little train that set on the edge of her desk. It was the one thing in the room that wasn’t set dressing, a cheap little thing clipped out of a coke can and the sharp edges blurred down. It still click-clacked its way efficiently forwards, spring unwinding stiffly. Baker caught it before it hit the floor.

‘As opposed to the moderately whelming advantage between your ears that we currently enjoy?’ he teased, returning the toy to its original resting place. ‘We’re winning, President.’

‘With this,’ Rachel said, tapping her finger against the paper. ‘We won’t even need to fight.’

He looked thoughtful, mouth quirking down at the corners. ‘In that case...do we have some sort of retirement package?’ he asked. ‘At my time of life, I’m a bit past retraining for a new career.’

That started her into a laugh. Baker - Jeremy - was over-familiar, unpredictable and her children verged dangerously close to being fond of him - but he could make her laugh when she’d have sworn she’d forgotten how.

‘That’s it?’ she asked. ‘No questions? No doubts? No demands for explanations?’

He shrugged.

‘Rachel...’ he paused, checking the side-stepping of protocol was acceptable. She gave permission with a tip of her chin. ‘Rachel, you’re the smartest person I have ever met. It’s like...if you were in a movie about the moon crashing into the earth you’d be the rogue scientist played by Lucy Lawless who refuses to toe the establishment line and saves the world.’

‘...Thank you.’

‘So since we’re in an actual, real life ‘boiling the ass-germs out of our drinking water’ dystopia,’ Jeremy went on. ‘I figure you probably know what you’re talking about. You’ve not let me down so far. I mean, look at us. You found me dying in the gutter, literally in the gutter, and now I’m a mid-level functionary. It’s the American dream.’

That reference made her frown - a reflexive reproof - but she let it go.

‘So you don’t want to know why he’s so important?’ she asked.

‘Want to know? Sure. Of course I do,’ he said. ‘Need to know? No. If you say he can do all this, change the political geography of the world again, and that I just have to take it on faith? OK.’

She stared at him, searching his face for a lie or a suck up. He wasn’t above either. This time though, he looked genuine.

‘Sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘I am grateful Charlie poked you with that stick, Jeremy.’

He waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively. ‘I am always ready to show my appreciation.’

Rachel smoothed the message from Charlie absently, tracing the rough scrawl of her name at the bottom. ‘Get my personal security detachment ready then,’ she said. ‘I want to visit my son tonight. I might not have much time in the next few weeks.’

Jeremy nodded. ‘Will do,’ he said. ‘Do you want to be alone with your note, or-’

‘Don’t presume,’ Rachel told him, letting a little chill clip her voice. She deliberately ripped the note up and tossed it in the trash, ignoring the tug of sentiment against her ribs. It wasn’t something she was in the habit of indulging, and why be sentimental about a scrawled scrap of paper anyhow? ‘What other business is there, Captain Baker?’

Five other rebel bases had been gutted - with less lasting result than Charlie’s raid, Blanchard had sent back their diplomats after an ‘unfortunate accident’ and two incursions from Georgia had been repelled.

‘I never thought I’d wish Foster was back in power,’ she said sourly.

‘Neville has a personal grudge,’ Jeremy said. ‘And his wife hates you.’

That actually stung. Rachel gave him an indignant look. ‘I was perfectly pleasant to Julia. Even after Tom’s treachery, I offered to let her and Jason stay. For Charlie’s sake if nothing else.’

‘You’re cleverer than her,’ Jeremy said.

‘So?’

‘Well, it doesn’t bother me, but I’m used to not being the smartest person in any given postcode. Julia isn’t. Besides, you don’t play the same games she does and that made her games seem...pointless.’

Rachel got up and walked over to look at the map table, tracing her finger along the border. They had lost territory to Neville. That was a weakness she wasn’t willing, wasn’t able to tolerate.

‘Do you know who Neville’s main contact in Philadelphia is?’ she asked, tilting her head towards Jeremy. His chair scraped as he got up to look over her shoulder.

‘I know the name of someone high up,’ he said. ‘I’d put money on her not being Neville’s highest placed contact, but she’s valuable.’

‘She?’

‘Yes, she. You of all people shouldn’t be surprised to find that women are effective at all sorts of things.’

‘I’m surprised Neville has a female asset,’ Rachel corrected him. ‘The man can’t think of any more withering insult than suggesting you might be a woman.’

Jeremy laughed. ‘I never got that. His wife was the second most dangerous person, I know.’

‘Don’t suck up,’ Rachel said dryly. ‘The asset. Is she someone we want to turn.’

‘I have no faith in double agents,’ Jeremy said. ‘Their job description depends on being disloyal to someone. I like my assets bought, not rented.’

‘Then kill her,’ Rachel said.

It wasn’t an unusual order. She wasn’t the president of the United States, she couldn’t afford to have plausible deniability. For some reason, today, hearing come coldly out of her mouth shocked her. Maybe it was Charlie’s letter, the thoughts of Miles and before. She hesitated, half hoping Baker would question her - even when she knew she’d never trust him close again if he did.

‘Discreetly or to make a point?’ he said.

She closed her eyes. Second thoughts were for women who hadn’t brought the world to an end. If this was something she’d regret...well, she was used to that feeling.

‘Matter of factly,’ she said. ‘Don’t try and make it look like natural causes, but don’t put a sign on it. Neville doesn’t deserve the sop to his ego.’

Jeremy stepped back and left with a respectful, ‘sir’. The flowers and the curtains were one thing, ma’am was entirely another. Alone again Rachel braced her hands on the edges of the table and bowed her head, hair falling over her shoulders to drown Georgia in flax. Sometimes it felt like every human being who’d survived the Blackout was bearing down on her shoulders. Just this huge weight, tethered to her bones, that she had to pick up every morning and carry all day.

It wasn’t even a burden anymore, just the expected weight of the day. Now...maybe she could lighten it just a little. One day maybe she’d be able to forget - because she knew there was no forgiveness.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Mud sucked and bubbled under the horses’ hooves as they stamped and milled in the middle of the ford. Charlie swore and wrestled with her horse, shoulders aching as she dragged its head down by the bridle.

‘Thirsk,’ she yelled, breaking off to swear as the horse tramped on her foot with a heavy hoof. ‘Get Monroe to the far bank; stay with him.’

On the back of the heavy bay Monroe sat with meek resignation, cuffed hands gripping the back of the saddle, as Thirsk laboured through the river. Her legs were soaked to the crotch, the tails of her uniform dripping. She grabbed the bridle near the bit, making the horse snort wetly down her arm and trapping her fingers…

Shit.

Charlie swore and let go of the bridle, grabbing for her gun with bruised, aching fingers. ‘Monroe! Don’t you-’

He kicked Thirsk in the face, splattering her nose over her face with a crunch and a splutter of blood. Caught off guard Thirsk went down in the water, coughing on blood and dangling by one arm. Not even the most phlegmatic horse would tolerate that. The bay squealed and stamped, shaking its head and snapping Thirsk like a rat. Monroe didn’t dismount, he just let himself fall off the far side of the horse. He landed with a splash, somehow keeping his feet, and ran, obscured by the horses and the screaming Thirsk.

For a heartbeat, Charlie weighed ‘what next’. She made the wrong decision, lunging forwards and grabbing the bay’s bridle. It tossed her in the air too, yanking her feet out of the mire of mud and stones with a wrench she felt in her hips. The breath against her hand was hot with panic and she could the muscles tensing ready to bolt.

‘Son of a bitch,’ she muttered, including Monroe and the river in her curse. She grabbed her knife and slashed, hooking the edge under the leather strap and slicing. It was heavy grade leather and tough, taking two hard slashes to part it. The bridle flapped loose, dropping Thirsk into the water, and the horse, eyes white-rimmed with panic, reared and struck out with platter sized hooves. One caught Charlie in the hip and she staggered back, pain blinding her eyes with tears. Free the horse lumbered up onto the bank, kicking up plumes of dirty water.

It could be worse. That was the main lesson Charlie had learned from her trainers at Newton. No matter how bad something hurt, it could be worse.

She blinked twice, hard, and ignored the pain. The body lied. Hurt didn’t mean broken. Charlie grabbed Thirsk, the soldier’ face grey and shocky under the mud, and hauled her head up out of the water. The other two Irregulars finally jumped in, grabbing Thirsk’s feet and chasing after the horse.

As they man-handled Thirsk up onto the bank, Charlie’s brain kept up a running tally of seconds that turned into minutes. Monroe was getting away.

Thirsk was mumbling sorry through blood and split lips. Charlie patted her shoulder. ‘Not your fault, Sergeant.’ That she’d learned from her mother. Shit rolled downhill; responsibility flowed up. Charlie staggered to her feet. ‘Take care of her. I’ll get Monroe.’

Before there was a Republic, before she was an Irregular, Charlie had learned to hunt through Willard Price books, trial and error and the fear of her mom and little brother starving to death. Ironically - despite Rachel’s reputation - she’d never been able to stomach killing animals. It wasn’t as if Monroe was trying to hide his tracks anyhow. She followed the footprints and broken branches, the stray hairs in thorn bushes and smears of mud over stony paths.

Monroe was not getting away, not again, not from her. For Newton, for all the dead and - weak as that little girl who’d been scared her mommy would die - so she wouldn’t let Rachel down.

The trail stopped abruptly. Charlie teetered to a stop at a brook, her brain taking a while to click back in. Either he’d suddenly turned careful or...it was a trap.

She spun around in time to catch Monroe’s tackle in the stomach. His shoulder jarred the breath out of her and her leg - sick of all the abuse - went from under her. They landed in the brook, scuffling and punching each other in a parody of a proper fight. He cracked her cheekbone with his elbow and she dug her knee into his thigh - not the balls she was aiming for but still painful.

It galled her to admit it, but Monroe was the better fighter. He had experience on her, and from their file on him he’d been old world military. She was doling out some pain, but she wasn’t winning.

He drove his fist into her stomach, two, short hard blows that left her whining breathlessly, and then grabbed her hair to smack her head off the rocks. Everything went blurry and distant, hot pain spreading between her ears like water.

A hand braced against her chest and he yanked at her trousers, making her chest tighten with fear. He took her gun and scrambled off her. Charlie struggled to gather up the scattered threads of control, flinching from the coming blow. It never came. He was...sparing her.

She rolled over, brackish water filling her nose, and braced her hand on a rough, lichen slick rock. Her stomach flipped and twisted, squirting acid and vomit into her throat, as she staggered to her feet.

‘Monroe,’ she panted. ‘I’m not letting you go.’

He didn’t turn around, holding his injured arm and limping determinedly towards the trees. ‘You can’t beat me, Charlotte. You’re just not good enough.’

She threw the rock at him, putting her shoulder into it, and cracked him square in the back of the head. He wobbled, turned far enough around to stare at her and then went down to his knees.

‘Honour is for rebels,’ she told him, stumbling over and grabbing the gun he’d dropped. He was halfway back to his feet, but he stopped - grimacing - as the gun pointed steadily at his temple. ‘And I’m as good as I need to be. Lie down and put your hands behind your back.’

‘I’ll puke if I do,’ he warned her.

‘Try not to choke on it.’

He laughed - or tried to - and carefully lowered himself to the ground.

‘How’d you get your hands free?’ she asked, not really expecting an answer and not getting one. Fine, they’d just have to watch him closer. She knelt on his back and fumbled her belt loose, yanking it out of the loops on her pants.

‘I’m flattered, Lieutenant Charlotte,’ Bass drawled, the edges blurred off his words. ‘But we’ve only just met.’

She ignored him, looping the belt around his raw wrists and yanking it tight. ‘I should break your legs now.’

‘Then you’d have to carry me,’ he pointed out reasonably.

Charlie dragged him to his feet roughly, shoving him away when he tried to lean on her. She grabbed his chin, stubble rough against her fingers and dragged his head down until she could stare into his eyes. The pupils were dark and even, and she could see blue all the way around. Hopefully she’d not done any permanent-

He kissed her. It only took a brief dip of his head, closing the scant distance between their faces, and it was only a chaste brush of bruised, bloody and muddy lips. Charlie froze in surprise and then shoved him away with both hands. He staggered backwards and tripped over his heels, landing on his backside with a bone-jarring thump.

‘What the hell…?’

Monroe groaned, squinting his eyes painfully. ‘God, I think you cracked my skull.’

‘Good,’ she said. Except dead, he was no use to Rachel. Muttering darkly under her breath she went behind him and checked his head, running her fingers through his hair. There was a goose-egg under the curls and a dribble of blood, but no soft depression or movement. She’d seen a man after a fight once, the back of his skull pulped until you could have stuck your finger in and stirred his brains. ‘You’ll live. Unless you try that again.’

He leaned back against her legs. ‘It might be my last chance to kiss a pretty girl, Charlotte.’

‘Lieutenant Matheson,’ she corrected him, stepping away and letting him sprawl. ‘And maybe my mother will let you kiss her before she has your throat cut. Now get up.’

He didn’t. Charlie hauled him to his feet and marched him back down to the river. A swollen-faced Thirsk gave him a dirty look over the grubby rag she held to her bloody nose.

‘Let me break that pretty face,’ she said.

‘No,’ Charlie said flatly. She’d never liked torture. Sometimes there was no way around it, but she wasn’t turning a blind eye to it for someone’s personal grudge. ‘And get the notion of payback out of your head. I won’t have you messing with him - the President wants him in one piece.’

Swearing indistinctly Thirsk used the other Irregular’s leg to drag herself to her feet. She gestured emphatically at her face. ‘He broke my nose!’

‘He tried to get away. We’re going to have him interrogated and tortured, so you can hardly blame him,’ Charlie said. She ignored Monroe’s low chuckle. Just because she understood his motivations didn’t mean sympathy. ‘We were careless; he took advantage. That won’t happen again. Now get the horses ready, we can still cover miles before we stop for the night.’

For a second she thought that they were going to defy her. Instead, after one last resentful glare, Thirsk bent her neck. With her agreement, the other two relaxed. Except within an hour it was clear that while Monroe wasn’t going to die, Thirsk might not be so lucky. She hunched over in the saddle, holding her chest and breathing unevenly. When they stopped to check on her, bruises lined her ribcage and her shoulder was swollen, purpling and hot to the touch.

‘She needs a leech,’ Monroe said, leaning against a tree. Despite his bound hands and battered face, he looked graceful and confident. Like he meant to be there.

‘No one asked you,’ Charlie said, through tight lips. ‘Shut up or I’ll have you gagged.’

‘Of course,’ he went on. ‘If you stop for a doctor, that slows you down doesn’t it? So, what’s more important, Lieutenant Charlotte? Your loyalty to your mother or your men?’

Charlie wiped her hand over her mouth. ‘Gag him.’

‘Sir?’

‘Gag. Him. I don’t want to hear one more word out of that mouth.’

Poe hesitated, giving Monroe a vaguely apologetic look, and then got up. He used a handkerchief from his pocket, shoving it into Monroe’s mouth and tying a strip of cloth around to hold it in place.  It didn’t make Monroe look any less smug.

Rachel was waiting in Philadelphia. She’d never told Charlie exactly why she wanted Monroe so badly, but whatever it was took precedence over everything else. Charlie couldn’t let her down.

‘We’ll stop in Chicago,’ she said, the words escaping her lips not what she’d planned to say. ‘The leech there can deal with Thirsk and we can get fresh horses, resupply.’

Behind the gag, she thought Monroe was laughing.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Back when the lights had been on and life wasn’t shit, Bass had spent Thanksgiving in Chicago. It had been before Ben married Rachel and the invitations dried up. He remembered it as a place with friendly barmen and friendlier women, although the world was full of both when you were a good-looking bloke who was planning to die before hitting thirty and spent accordingly.

Now it was grubby and desperate, men and women with their bones staring through their skin begging for coin at the gate. No children though. Give President Matheson that, she made sure that the children living under her aegis were fed and cared for. In Republic ‘sanctuaries’for those whose parents fell short, fed propaganda and groomed to join up one way or another once they hit 16. Bass had never been able to decide whether it was a humanitarian gesture corrupted, or if she’d been that cynical all along. Maybe it was both.

Charlie sent one of her Irregulars to clear the way, the heavy-set man shoving pleading people out of the road as they groped at him with desperate hands. A few - Bass noted - were less desperate and more calculating, dipping into his pockets and tugging at his belt.

Inside the city, walking through the rows of ramshackle stalls, Bass with his bruised face, gag and cuffs attracted attention.

‘Spy!’ one sharp-faced boy yelled. ‘The Irregulars got a Plains spy.’

Others recognised his face, muttering under their breath and behind their hands. Even if you didn’t support the rebels, it was too easy to say the wrong - the traitorous - thing when talking about them. Spy was much better. Uncomplicated. Everyone hated the Plains nations, the only ones they ever saw were the border thieves.

‘Filthy spy,’ a woman yelled, voice shrill and excited. A rotted apple came fly out of the crowd and hit Bass on the side of the head, jostling his headache in all new patterns. It splattered and oozed, dripping down his cheek and filling his nose with the sour-sweet smell of turned cider. Someone joined in with a tomato and then a stone, their aim not as true as Charlie’s. It bounced off his horse’s withers, making it snort and tuck its body tight under him.

‘Enough,’ Charlie yelled, voice cracking over the crowd like a whip.

Bass could remember the feel of her head in his hands, the crack when it hit the rocks. Her head must hurt nearly as much as his, but it didn’t show on her grim, bruised face.

‘This man is a prisoner of the Matheson Republic and under my protection,’ she said. ‘One more damn thing thrown - especially if it gets on me - and you’ll be joining him in the stockade. Understand!’

There was muttering, and a few thoughtfully hefted fruits, but the half-hearted mob quickly dissipated. Bass spat apple pulp off his lips. A shame. He didn’t enjoy getting pelted with fruit, but a riot would have been an opportunity. There had been faces he knew in the crowd.

Still, courtesy didn’t hurt...much. He inclined his head to Charlie and mumbled a garbled thanks through a wad of damp, not-so-clean cotton.

‘Don’t bother,’ she said. ‘I just didn’t want splattered.’

She kicked the horse forwards, leaving one of the other Irregulars to shepherd Monroe through the streets. They crossed the bridge, the Irregular uniforms seeing them waved through the toll gate, and to what used to be the Merchandise Mart. Flags flew from the windows, the Matheson sigil pale blue against navy, and iron grids were riveted across the windows on the first five floors.

Smoky black char marked one wall, the bricks chipped and scorched. Charlie caught Monroe looking at it.

‘Rachel ordered it left there,’ she said. ‘Evidence that your best efforts were...ineffectual.’

He just raised an eyebrow at her. Charlie leant over and hooked a finger into his gag, tugging it free. Bass licked his lips, running his tongue around his cottony mouth to work up some spit.

‘Funny thing, Charlie? That wasn’t even the Rebels. Just an injured man with a grudge. A lot of people hate your mother.’

Surprise flickered through her eyes as she glanced from him to the scorch-mark and back again, searching his eyes carefully. Her throat worked as she swallowed, but if there was doubt she smothered it under loyalty.

‘The message is the same,’ she said flatly. They got to the front of the building and dismounted, handing over the reins to a bony teen, his ankles and knobbly wrists sticking out of the sleeves of his uniform. As he lead the horses away, Charlie put a hand on Monroe’s injured shoulder. Her fingers tightened enough to make him grunt, an attention-grabbing fraction away from being a squeeze. ‘Your name is...Ben Baker, you’re a horse thief.’

If she wasn’t Matheson’s daughter, Bass thought he could like Charlie. She was loyal, she tried hard and - despite herself - she had a habit of doing the right thing. As a liar, though, she was tragic.

‘And a horse thief is getting a personal escort, by the President’s daughter, to the capital - why?’

Charlie bit her lip, looking chagrined for a second. ‘Deserter?’

‘Better,’ he said.

She half-smiled and then caught herself, shaking her head and giving him a shove forwards. ‘Just remember, Monroe, plenty of people hate you too. Especially round here.’

In the end, Monroe doubted anyone would have questioned Charlie’s original lie about him being a horse thief. Even aside from no-one wanting her to carry tales to her mother, Charlie was almost ridiculously earnest. All big blue eyes, wide mouth and no airs and graces, turning down the commander’s suite of rooms in favour of a closet sized barracks room with a narrow bed and a battered old chest for furnishings.

She got a bedroll for Monroe.

‘Really, Lieutenant Charlotte,’ he said, sitting - uninvited - on the edge of the bed. ‘I think this relationship is moving a bit too fast. I’m not ready to commit.’

Charlie rolled her eyes at him. ‘You going to be quipping on the gallows, Monroe?’

‘If it pisses off Rachel,’ he said.

She sat down on the chest and hooked her foot up, tugging the laces loose on her boot. ‘It probably would,’ she said. ‘Keep it up.’

The boots thumped on the floor and she stripped off her jacket, revealing the thin cotton undershirt. Sweat glued it to her ribs and across the curve of her breasts. She was his enemy, she’d killed his men and Bass still caught himself staring hungrily at the slice of lightly tanned stomach exposed as she reached up to twist her hair back.

‘Put your eyes back in your head,’ she said. ‘That’s all I’m taking off.’

‘Like to do it with your socks on, Lieutenant Charlotte? Kinky.’

She pushed herself off the trunk and walked over to him. ‘Turn over.’

Bass raised his eyebrows. ‘Really kinky.’

Charlie shoved him over and unlocked his cuffs, wrenching his hand up over his head and attaching him to the headboard.

‘Try anything tonight and I really will have the leech hobble you,’ she told him, leaning back. One hand scrubbed over her face tiredly, fingers tugging the corner of her mouth down. ‘Get some sleep, Monroe. We leave early.’

She turned the lantern out and he listened to her settle on the floor. All he could make out was the pale ribbon of her hair over the grey shadow that could have been her shoulder. ‘How’s your friend. Thrisk?’

‘Thirsk. She’ll live.’

‘Shame.’

He heard the intake of her breath, the silence in the room going sharp. After a second she made a low, rough sound that could have been a bitter laugh. ‘Thank you. If I ever feel bad about your slow death, I’ll remember that.’

It took a while before her breathing slowed and steadied into sleep. Even then she slept lightly,  twitching half awake at the slightest noise. Bass murmured her back asleep again each time, voice silky and cozening, while he quietly worked at the hinge on his cuff with a shim. It was...almost...there when the door opened. Bass went still, hooding his eyes to hide the wet gleam that would betray he was awake.

Light gleamed on a length of metal. Apparently someone didn’t believe Rachel Matheson would ever have hired him as one of her Irregulars. Either that or they had very strong feelings about deserters. Bass shifted his weight on the bed, bracing his foot on the floorboards and took a breath to raise the alarm.

The shadowy figure signed him to silence, gloved fingers moving in a familiar pattern that throttled Bass’ yell to silence. Son-of-a-bitch. He held his tongue and watched the man slid on silent feet towards Charlie.

It would be quick. Hand over the mouth and a knife up under the ribs, into her heart. It would be a familiar scene, although usually he had his own handful of bloody knife. Bass thought about just waiting it out this time, but…

‘Long time, no see,’ he said.

The man gave Bass a glare out of bootblack shadowed eyes - the ‘what the fuck’ not even needing words - and Charlie woke with the wide-eyed alertness of the young, and drove her elbow into the side of her attacker’s knee. A fist knocked the breath out of her before she could yell for help and they grappled messily on the ground for the knife, Charlie barely keeping the blade from her throat.

‘Need a hand, Lieutenant Matheson?’ Bass asked, lifting his foot up onto the bed and out of the way as they rolled towards him. ‘Looking like you’re losing another fight.’

Charlie snarled in frustration, baring her teeth, and the man fumbled a block, getting a bony knee right in the balls. The groan rattled out of him, taking the fight with him. He dropped his knife, blade rattling off the ground, and rolled to his feet, lunging for the door. Charlie grabbed the knife and snapped her hand back to her shoulder. Before she could release Bass swung off the bed and drove his boot into her ribs, knocking her off balance. The knife buried itself in the doorframe and the man was gone.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Charlie spat, bouncing back to her feet and going after him.

Bass lay back on the bed. She’d not catch him. Miles was always at his best when the plan had gone up in flames.

 


	8. Chapter 8

‘So what now?’ Aaron asked, blinking nervously. He took his glasses off and breathed on them, polishing them nervously with the hem of his t-shirt. ‘Should we move again?’

Miles scrubbed the black off his face with his shirt, tossing it into the fire. ‘Are we going to run, you mean?’

‘Well, um, yes,’ Aaron said. ‘If Bass tells the President where you are-’

‘He won’t.’

More blinking. Aaron slid his glasses back on, hooking the taped leg carefully over his ear. ‘Everyone talks. Eventually.’

‘Read that in an Ian Fleming book?’

‘No.’

Miles grunted and grabbed a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar, twisting the lid off and tipping it into his mouth. It tasted like burning, raw alcohol and tannin. He didn’t drink because he liked the taste though.

He’d nearly killed her.

Shit.

Another mouthful of booze did nothing to banish the memory of desperate hands clenched around his wrist and blue eyes huge with fear and adrenaline. In his head, Charlie had somehow stayed the same wiry little girl who’d clambered up trees in a pink tutu. Too young to have even realised you weren’t meant to be a tomboy and a pretty princess.

Even if it had occurred to him though - that the blonde officer with the big eyes could have been the girl he’d spent years looking for - he’d never have believed Rachel had sent her into the field. Not just into the field, up against Bass. What the fuck was she thinking? Charlie was her daughter.

‘He won’t talk, because I’m going to get the idiot out of this mess before he gets to Philly,’ Miles said, wiping his mouth on his hand. ‘So you don’t need to worry.’

Aaron took the whiskey, pouring a shot into his tea. He took a gulp and pulled a face, sniffing back snot.

‘What if you don’t?’ he worried aloud. ‘They’ll be on guard now, they’ll take precautions.’

Miles slouched back, his balls aching and body bruised. ‘Then I’ll have to walk to Philadelphia,’ he said. ‘And kill my sister in law.’


End file.
